Month: May 2015

It’s been a good long while since I’ve last posted, but I’ve been incredibly busy with college. Have my finals going on right now, almost done with my bachelor degree in computer science.

I’m going to start by just putting this incredibly pretty terrain here:

If you’re willing to read it to the end, this post will teach you how to create this sort of terrain using C++.

I’m aware that there are programs that can achieve the same result available for free such as L3DT (which is actually used in this project), which are much better than this humble program and much more convenient to use, but I’d like to imagine that this simplifies the process of procedural terrain generation a little bit by reducing the complexity required to understand how to operate L3DT. If anyone is a beginner like me to the topic of procedural generation, perhaps this will be of help to them as well.

This is a simple console program that allows the user to create heightmaps. A heightmap is a file that can store surface elevation values, which is a complicated way of saying it stores height information. This height information can be used to model terrain in 3D game engines and some 3D modelling software.

What I’ve created was actually done for my final year project. And to give credit where it’s due it’s mainly based off a paper written by Jonathan Roberts and Ke Chen, Senior Members, IEEE

“An attempt to implement the Perlin noise algorithm and machine learning concepts and use them to develop a tool that allows even a layman to generate procedural terrain that can be exported as a Photoshop RAW file and used as a heightmap in any game engine such as Unreal or Unity.”

To break that down:

1) Perlin Noise: A nifty algorithm created by Ken Perlin, this allows for the creation of noise that has a natural, organic and non repetitive appearance, which gives it a resemblance to a variety of natural objects such as clouds, fire, and terrain. This means Perlin noise textures can be used as heightmaps. I have used the excellent open source library Libnoise to implement Perlin noise.

2) Machine Learning: A method used to impart pseudo-artificial intelligence to the program by allowing it to take in input (feedback of user) which alters the output. Every iteration of feedback input improves the results of the previous stage. It does this by identifying a favorable content category and constraining future output to that category.

3) Exporting the heightmap as a Photoshop RAW file: Using the amazing tool L3DT(Large 3D Terrain Generator) to view the output of the terrain generation, user can decide if it matches their needs. User is presented with option to finalize output, modify it some way (more mountainous, flatter, hillier), or accept the output but request a refinement. When they choose to finalize, the heightmap is converted to Photoshop RAW format (again using a script in L3DT, all credit to Aaron Bundy). This RAW file can be imported into Unreal, Unity i.e. level design softwares.

Apart from the above, I’ve also used the SFML libraries to create the GUI that displays the noise texture for user approval.

So in order to make this work, you’d have to integrate the libnoise and SFML libraries into your project environment to successfully compile the source code given below.

Feel free to clone the repository I made on GitHub using the following link:

Above are pictures of a Perlin noise texture generated by the program.

Once the heightmap has reached the satisfaction of the user, it can be exported in Photoshop RAW format, upon which it can then be imported into game engines like Unreal and Unity to be used to create terrain.

This is a student made project and it’s bound to have some bugs here and there, but I believe it is a good first foray into procedural generation, which is a topic I shall definitely be pursuing in the future.